A blog by Mike aka Thog. I write. I game. I've never eaten a starfish.

Sunday, 6 April 2014

TableTop Gaming Day 2014 Report

So, yesterday was International TableTop Day, a day to get together with people, and play all kinds of tabletop games, be they card, board, dice, or whatever. My day kicked off with a few hours manic cleaning to try to get the place up to standard before revelers arrived, as well as doing something that I very rarely do - engage with strangers on Twitter.

Twitter for me is generally about my news feed, and about tweeting. TableTop Day is one of the rare days that I go on, and actually search for a hashtag, and fire out positive tweets to anyone else I can find that is also taking part, and Twitter is great for this because it really reminds you just how big the world is, and makes you wonder at how you can get a message from you to people on the far side of the planet in an instant, and you find out fascinating things - for example, TableTop Day was particularly good in some parts of Australia, because it was the same day that their daylight savings time ended, and they all got an extra hour to game (or sleep or do whatever) - this is slightly mind-boggling for me as we've just started our daylight savings time!

It's also given me the opportunity to think of the next games I must buy, which are:

Pandemic - I saw tons of people planning to play this, and even though it's supposed to be rock hard, it's a great game

Pass the Pigs - I had this when I was a kid and lost it! But it's great fun.

Settlers of Catan - again, like Pandemic, a very popular game indeed and one I must sample.

TableTop Day is a great opportunity to connect with other geeks (not that you have to be a geek to play games!) and one that I've endeavoured to take full advantage of.

Looking at my TableTop Day, on the day we played Cluedo, Ivor the Engine, QI, Hare & Tortoise (which I messed up as I did last year!) and Cards Against Humanity (which was by far the most popular as always!)

Here's a very brief photo timeline - very brief due to the fact that I only took four photos during the whole day!

8am - got all my games out. Slightly embarrassed at the amount of dust on some of them.

1.30pm - about two hours in, and after a visit to the chippy for lunch, we got into some good old dice rolling "Snakes & Ladders" style gaming - Ivor The Engine is a game for 4 to 7 year olds, and this made it a lot easier for us to understand/

3pm-ish - I discovered a cocktail of cream soda and pretend Jagermeister, which was pretty decent, and became the forfeit drink for Cards Against Humanity!

5pm-ish - Cards Against Humanity mid-game. I spread out my successful question cards in an effort to make them look more impressive. Note how empty my glass is in comparison to the previous photo!

After the games I enjoyed some indian food and some NCIS before falling asleep on the sofa - all in all a pretty decent day, and one that must be repeated more than once a year.